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Crime and Suffering Dominate News Coverage of Children

Context Rarely Reported

(Washington, D.C., Feb. 19, 2002) Quick-hit stories of crime and violence, reported with little context, dominated news reports about children, according to a study released today by the Journalism Center on Children & Families on Children and Families. (Read the Executive Summary.)

Over a three-month period, more than 90 percent of newspaper and TV stories about children focused on youth crime and violence or abuse and neglect. Most significantly, fewer than one in 20 of those stories gave the public information to help connect those events to broader patterns and trends.

Stories on child health and teen childbearing provided the most data and perspective. However, such stories were rarely told.

“Context doesn’t have to be pages long. It can be a sentence. But without it, we fail in our mission to help educate our audiences and contribute to a more informed public debate,” said Beth Frerking, director of the center.

“We do a better job of providing context in stories on child care, child health insurance and teen childbearing. But try finding them.”

The study, "Coverage in Context: How Thoroughly the News Media Report Five Key Children's Issues," goes beyond previous research by examining the depth of coverage on child abuse and neglect, child care, child health insurance, teen childbearing and youth crime and violence. The $55,000 study is the largest empirical analysis of child-related news coverage produced by social scientists.

The center commissioned Prof. Dale Kunkel of the University of California, Santa Barbara, to conduct the study. His researchers tracked stories in 12 daily newspapers and on four national television networks between April 21 and July 20, 2001. They analyzed stories within the five topic areas for frequency, story frame (“breaking news” or “trend”), thoroughness of coverage and other indicators. To measure thoroughness, researchers looked for key information in each of the five topics that would provide a deeper understanding of the issue.

Other major findings include:

• In two topics — child care and teen childbearing — at least three out of four stories included important contextual information. Coverage of child health insurance was moderate on this measure, with 36 percent of stories providing broader perspective.

• Of stories on youth crime/violence, child health insurance and child abuse/neglect at least  nine of 10 were breaking news as opposed to trend pieces. In contrast, most stories on teen childbearing and child care were trend stories. News coverage of child health insurance was most likely to include information on public policy. Yet fewer than one in five stories about youth crime/violence and child abuse/neglect address policy perspectives.

• When examining only trend stories about youth crime/violence and child abuse/neglect, context was infrequently reported (24 percent and 34 percent respectively). However, every trend story about teen childbearing and child health insurance, and three-fourths of trend stories about child care, included larger context.

Stories were culled from 1,065 newspaper editions and 354 television newscasts.

The Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families is a nonprofit resource and training program for professional journalists. It conducts issue-oriented seminars, maintains an expert database and sponsors an annual awards contest (top prizes of $1,000 in 11 categories) for professional journalists. The center is a program of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park.

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